Sunday, January 29, 2006

Happy New Year

I should explain that in Thailand we get three New Years. There's the Western one, which is just a lazy continuation of the tacky consumerism we call Christmas - bad muzak versions of Phil Spector, fat babies in Santa suits, hedges toped as reindeer, etc etc. In fact, the Christmas/NY thing is really just a continuation of December 6, which is the King's Birthday and Father's Day all in one package. So what usually happens is the fairy lights go up some time in mid-November, and don't comes down until the end of Jan, after Chinese New Year (which is what we're on now) happens. Lots of food, firecrackers and dragons.

The Chinese began coming to Thailand in big numbers around the end of the 19th century, originally as unskilled labourers. Pretty soon they began making names for themselves in business, so that as early as the 1910s, the then king, Vajiravudh (Rama VI), published a book called The Jews Of The East, suggesting their influence ought to be curtailed. "In matters of money the Chinese are entirely devoid of morals and mercy. They will cheat you with a smile of satisfaction at their own perspicacity," he opined. Sound familiar?

Since then they've integrated fairly well, taking Thai names and so on, but they still dominate the business sector and, increasingly, politics. Only the civil service is an ethnic Thai holdout. Indeed, the big dirty secret of Thai patriotism is that, without the ethnic Chinese, the country would be screwed. Most farangs (that's us gaijin/gweilo/honkies) can't really tell the difference, except at New Year, when the Chinese all wear red shirts. It's like being in the wrong pub during a Manchester derby.

The final celebration comes in April, with Thai New Year, or Songkran. This is essentially trick or treat mated with a wet t-shirt competition; teenagers roaming the streets armed with buckets and water pistols, soaking anything that moves.

The key thing is, everyone takes part in each festival. Dragons, soaking, Auld Lang Syne, the lot. The Chinese know CNY is "theirs" but they don't stop anyone else joining in. The parallel situation in the UK, with hand-wringingly PC council functionaries setting up anaemic "Winter Festivals" and the inevitable opportunistic tabloid backlash about "abolishing Christmas" is simply tiresome. It's a party. Go.

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Author of books about Radiohead, Leonard Cohen and The Noughties, plus various odds and sods for The Guardian, Mojo, Time Out, Prospect, BBC, CNN and more. Finally doing an MA. You can reach me at timfootman (AT) gmail.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste

So what’s all this Cultural Snow business, then?

“The writing itself is no big thing. I mean I like writing. It’s even relaxing for me. But the content is a real zero. Pointless in fact.”“What do you mean?”“I mean, for instance, you do the rounds of fifteen restaurants in one day, you eat one bite of each dish and leave the rest untouched. You think that makes sense?”“But you couldn’t very well eat everything, could you?”“Of course not. I’d drop dead in three days if I did. And everyone would think I was an idiot. I’d get no sympathy whatsoever.”“So what choice have you got?” she said.“I don't know. The way I see it, it’s like shoveling snow. You do it because somebody’s got to, not because it's fun.”“Shoveling snow, huh?” she mused.“Well, you know, cultural snow,” I said.—from Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)